A Spider on the Stairs

by Cassandra Chan

  He moved out of the way so Jim could have room to work, and returned his attention to the list of names in his hand. Next to some of them Mittlesdon had placed asterisks, and at the bottom of the page he had written, in a very neat hand, “*keyholders.”

  “Well, well, well,” murmured Gibbons. “I wonder what you lot were doing last night or thereabouts.”

  “Would you mind if I stopped at the house in York for a bit?” Bethancourt asked his father. “It’s no bother if you were planning to use it.”

  Robert Bethancourt looked up in surprise.

  “I didn’t know you were planning on visiting York,” he said. “I thought you were off back to London tomorrow.”

  “If you did go,” put in his mother practically, “you could check on the place and make sure it hasn’t flooded again—Carter’s away for the holidays, so he won’t be checking in until the end of the week.”

  Bethancourt nodded. The family’s townhouse in York had had problems in the past with water in the basement when there had been heavy rains.

  “I was going to head home,” Bethancourt answered his father, “but something’s come up. Jack’s in York, looking into a murder, and I thought I might join him there and have a look in.”

  “Oh,” said Robert. He eyed his son speculatively.

  When Bethancourt had first shown an interest in criminal cases, Robert had prevailed upon his old school chum, currently the chief commissioner of New Scotland Yard, to allow Bethancourt access to official investigations, in the hope that his son would be inspired to take up a career with the police. But that had been some time ago, and Bethancourt did not seem any nearer to collecting a policeman’s salary than he had been at the beginning.

  “Certainly,” said Robert now. “The house is empty at the moment, there’s no reason you shouldn’t use it. Have Jack in to stay, too, if you like. It’s sure to be more comfortable than wherever he’s billeted.”

  “There’s not much available in York at the last minute,” agreed Ellen. “Not during Christmas at any rate. The poor lad’s probably stuck in some grotty B and B.”

  Bethancourt had not thought of that. “I didn’t think to ask,” he admitted.

  “What kind of case is it?” asked Robert.

  “He came up on the trail of a serial killer,” answered Bethancourt, “but I think now he’s helping the Yorkshire CID with something else—half the force is apparently down with the flu.”

  “I heard about that,” said Robert. “The Ashdon killer, isn’t it? The first time he’s struck this far north.”

  “That’s right,” said Bethancourt. “I don’t actually know too much about the case—Jack got put onto it after I left town. I’ll drive over tomorrow after lunch then.”

  “Do let us know whether or not the house is all right,” said Ellen.

  “Of course,” said Bethancourt. “Thanks.”

  But his luck seemed to have turned. A fresh squall swept over the Dales during dinner and heavy flooding was predicted as a result. The guests who were not staying at the Grange left soon after the meal in order to make sure they would reach their homes before the rivers rose.

  Bethancourt’s father, having seen the last of them out, remarked, “You might want to leave tonight, Phillip, instead of tomorrow. I doubt any of us will be getting out of Wharfedale by morning.”

  Margaret looked up from her seat by the fire. “But tomorrow’s Boxing Day,” she said. “Aren’t we taking the donations down to Harrogate in the morning?”

  “I doubt it,” answered Robert. “If they’re right about the rain keeping up, I imagine the road will be flooded at either end by morning. Half your mother’s luncheon guests won’t be able to make it here, either.”

  “Well,” said Bethancourt, doing his best to control his eagerness, “if we’re not going to make it to Harrogate anyway, I might as well go to York tonight.”

  “I don’t see why not,” said his father. “You could be stuck here for days otherwise, depending on the weather. I swear, I’ve never seen such a holiday season.”

  “I’ll just go pack my things then,” said Bethancourt happily.

  He drove into York just after midnight under a pitch-black sky with not a star to be seen. He had left most of the rain behind him in the Dales, however; in York it had been reduced to a steady drizzle.

  Gibbons was waiting for him at the back gate, having been alerted to his friend’s imminent arrival by phone.

  “Hello, Cerberus,” he said, bending down to scratch the big dog’s ears as Bethancourt let him out of the car. “Happy Christmas, Phillip.”

  “If you say so,” replied Bethancourt ungraciously. “Let’s get in, shall we? I’m not dressed for this weather.”

  He led the way up the garden, fishing in his jacket pocket for the keys.

  “It’s good of you to ask me to stay,” said Gibbons, slinging his duffel over one shoulder. “That place they had me staying in was positively depressing.”

  “Are the rest of the Scotland Yard team still there?” asked Bethancourt. “Damn this lock—oh, wait, I’ve got the wrong key.”

  “No,” answered Gibbons. “Mine was the last room open at that B and B, and besides, they had to come up with something better than that for a detective superintendent. Someone high up pulled strings and got him a suite at the Best Western. They didn’t have anything else open, so I understand the rest of the team is camping out in the sitting room.”

  “I’d really rather not invite them here unless you think it necessary,” said Bethancourt, finally succeeding with the door.

  “Why the devil should you?” said Gibbons ruthlessly. “You’re my friend, not theirs.”

  “Thank God,” said Bethancourt mildly. “I don’t know what my mother would have said if I had turned the place into a police headquarters. Here we are then—doesn’t look like it flooded.”

  “Carpet’s dry,” agreed Gibbons, maneuvering with his duffel a little awkwardly in the narrow hallway in order to close the door. “Does it flood often?”

  “You have no idea,” said Bethancourt darkly. “Here, let’s leave the luggage till later and search out a drink. It’s Christmas—you’d think my father would have the bar fully stocked, just in case. Let me get a light on. . . . There we go.”

  “Can I put the electric fire on?” asked Gibbons as they entered the drawing room. “It’s chilly.”

  “By all means,” replied Bethancourt, making for the drinks cabinet standing in one corner. “As I thought,” he said, opening the doors, “the pater stocked up. What will you have?”

  “Is there scotch?” asked Gibbons, who from previous experience knew that the Bethancourts’ taste in whisky ran to expensive single malts.

  “There’s a twenty-five-year-old bottle of Bowmore,” said Bethancourt. “Will that do?”

  Gibbons sighed in pleasure. “Very nicely,” he said, sinking into a very comfortable armchair and stretching his feet toward the glow of the electric fire. The drawing room was very elegant, meant for entertaining, but it was comfortable, too, and infinitely preferable to the B&B he had come from, which had smelled like cabbage.

  “I think I’ll join you,” said Bethancourt, pulling out a couple of crystal glasses. “So how’s this new murder shaping?”

  “I haven’t got very far yet,” answered Gibbons. “There was no identification on the body, so we’re not even sure who the victim was. The medical examiner confirms that she was strangled and puts the time of death at sometime after seven on Christmas Eve.”

  “Quite a nasty Christmas present,” remarked Bethancourt, handing him a glass and collapsing into a second armchair. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers. Ah, that’s good,” said Gibbons, savoring the taste of the liquor on his tongue. “Where was I?”

  “The medical examiner,” prompted Bethancourt.

  “Right,” said Gibbons. “Well, he puts her age at about twenty-five, and she was apparently in perfect health before she was murdered. She struggled with her at
tacker, so we’re looking for a reasonably strong specimen—our victim was a tall woman. She took a couple of punches to the head before she was killed, so it’s possible she was unconscious when she was strangled. Anyway, the murderer used something—possibly a scarf or a cloth belt, the doctor said.”

  “It sounds fairly straightforward,” said Bethancourt, disappointed. “A quarrel of some kind, and things get out of hand.”

  “Ah, but here’s where it gets interesting,” said Gibbons. “How did she and her killer get into the bookshop in the first place?”

  Bethancourt shrugged and lit a cigarette. “The killer’s probably someone who works there and has a set of keys,” he answered.

  “Possibly,” conceded Gibbons. “But why were they in the bookshop on Christmas Eve?”

  “Stealing something, most likely,” suggested Bethancourt. “Old Mittlesdon has some very nice editions, some of them worth thousands. Christmas would certainly be an excellent opportunity to loot the place—it’s probably the one time you could be certain Mittlesdon wouldn’t be there.”

  “Yes.” Gibbons sighed. “I’d thought of that, but Mittlesdon says his most valuable items were in the safe, and were all accounted for. Moreover, no one except him has the combination.”

  Bethancourt shrugged. “It still doesn’t strike me as very interesting,” he said. “No doubt they had a plan for getting into the safe, but argued before they got to that part of the program. When the argument ended in murder, our killer got the wind up and fled.”

  “A very plausible scenario,” agreed Gibbons. “But things might have a different interpretation put on them. Anyway, I’ll know better once I’ve managed to talk to all of the key-holders.”

  “I take it you didn’t have time to track any of them down today?” asked Bethancourt.

  “No.” Gibbons shook his head. “By the time I was done at the scene and with the autopsy, I only had time to follow up with Mittlesdon. He was still quite shaken up, but he managed to give me a few details about his employees.”

  “Anything interesting?” asked Bethancourt.

  “No, just clearing up who’s in charge of what. Unfortunately, the one piece of real information I got from him was not encouraging.” Gibbons frowned at his glass and then sighed and drank.

  “Well, what was it?” asked Bethancourt impatiently.

  “Oh—sorry,” said Gibbons. “I think I must be tired. Well, it’s about the keys. All employees have the key to the office door, but only four of them have the keys to the store itself.”

  “That would seem to narrow it down nicely,” said Bethancourt. “And yet I see from your expression that for some reason it doesn’t.”

  “It doesn’t because people are quite cavalier with their keys,” said Gibbons. “So far as I can tell, nearly any of the employees could have made off with a set of keys for long enough to have copies made. For example, the back door is always kept locked, but the smokers go out that way to have a cigarette, and it’s common for them to borrow a set of keys from one of the managers, or even the spare set that’s kept in the office.”

  “Oh dear,” said Bethancourt.

  “Mr. Mittlesdon earnestly assured me that all of his employees were very trustworthy,” said Gibbons dryly.

  “Except perhaps for the one who’s a murderer?” suggested Bethancourt.

  “He hasn’t got that far,” said Gibbons. “He’s still in the ‘it must be an outsider’ phase.”

  “It really can’t have been, can it?” asked Bethancourt. “I mean, quite apart from the matter of the keys, there must have been some reason for your killer and victim to have been at a bookshop at Christmas—it’s not like they could have wandered in there by accident.”

  “No, most certainly not,” agreed Gibbons. “Well, we’ll see what comes out tomorrow.” He yawned. “That drink’s gone straight to my head. I’m sorry, Phillip, I think I had better go to bed.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” responded Bethancourt. “It’s after midnight, after all.”

  “Yes, but I meant to ask about Marla,” said Gibbons.

  Bethancourt’s face shuttered at once.

  “That can wait,” he said shortly. “There’s really nothing to tell in any case. Here, let’s get you set up upstairs. What’s the agenda for tomorrow, by the way?”

  He had risen and was leading the way out of the room; Gibbons had little choice but to follow.

  “The shop’s set to open at ten,” he said, bending to pick up his duffel and swing it onto his shoulder. “Mittlesdon’s manager is scheduled to open tomorrow, along with four of the sales people. Mittlesdon says they usually show up about fifteen minutes early, although the manager might be there as early as half nine. I reckon that means I should be there by nine or a little earlier.”

  Bethancourt nodded as he tramped up the stairs. “Breakfast at eight then?” he suggested.

  “That sounds about right,” agreed Gibbons.

  “We’ll have to go out for it,” warned Bethancourt, opening one of the bedroom doors. “There won’t be anything perishable in the house. Here you are—the best room at Bethancourt’s B and B.”

  It looked like heaven to Gibbons, a well-appointed guest room with a very comfortable-looking double bed complete with a thick, silk-covered duvet and four feather pillows.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Thanks again, old man.”

  “Not at all,” replied Bethancourt automatically, checking to make sure the bed was made up. “The WC’s at the end of the hall; there should be towels in the armoire here. . . . Yes, there they are. Do you need anything else?”

  He looked around the room as if checking to make sure he had missed nothing.

  “No,” answered Gibbons. “I’m fine. I take it you’ll come with me in the morning?”

  “If that’s all right, I will,” said Bethancourt. “You never know—it might not be as simple as it appears.” He smiled a little sheepishly.

  Gibbons laughed at him.

  “You just want to make my job harder,” he said. “Yes, you can come, though I’d appreciate it if you’d fade into the background if Brumby or MacDonald show up.”

  “Not a problem,” said Bethancourt. “I’ll leave you to get some sleep, then. Good night, Jack.”

  “Good night,” echoed Gibbons.

  Bethancourt went back out into the hall, closing the door firmly behind him and picking up his bag, which he hefted along to the next door down. The room inside was much like the room he had just left Gibbons in. Bethancourt deposited the bag on the bed and went back downstairs. There he topped up the whisky in his glass, which he sipped while he carried Gibbons’s empty glass back to the kitchen. He checked the refrigerator and cupboards there for supplies, and found that though—as he had expected—there was no milk or other perishables, there was a stock of coffee.

  “Wonderful,” he murmured, and proceeded to set the coffeepot ready for the morning.

  He finished his whisky and left the glass in the sink before putting out all the lights on the ground floor and wandering back upstairs to his room, followed this time by Cerberus, who immediately lay down on the hearth rug to continue his nap. His master, however, was restless, and rather wished Gibbons had not brought up Marla just at bedtime. Nevertheless, in view of the early hour at which he would have to rise in the morning, he prepared for bed and settled in, lying wakeful in the dark, the specter of a slim, redheaded woman appearing against all desire in his mind’s eye. He was, he decided, still considerably angry, but he could see no help for that. He closed his eyes tightly and tried to think about the dead woman in the bookshop.

  5

  In Which Bethancourt Encounters a Flash from the Past

  It was not actually raining when they set out the next morning, though the skies were dark and threatening and the air was raw. Cerberus gamboled along beside them, being by far the most awake of the party and the only one who did not seem to mind the cold.

  “We’ll warm up as we go,” said Bethancour
t, starting off at a good pace. He was still feeling very fortunate to have escaped his parents’ house a day early. “It’s not far in any case.”

  “Oh,” said Gibbons, stifling a yawn. Despite copious amounts of coffee, he was not feeling very alert.

  “Not that way,” said Bethancourt, catching him by the arm. “We can cut through here and go down along Straker’s Passage. Haven’t you ever heard of a snickelway?”

  “No,” answered Gibbons grumpily.

  “Oh,” said Bethancourt, correctly interpreting this monosyllabic response as a lack of interest. “Well, York’s full of them. In this case, it’s a shortcut.”

  Gibbons let himself be steered off the sidewalk and along a path apparently leading into a garden. It did not seem to him a very likely way to get to Fossgate, but he trusted Bethancourt to know all the highways and byways of the city in which he had grown up. And in fact a passage that Gibbons would have called an alleyway and that Bethancourt persisted in calling a snickelway brought them up to the back side of the bookshop, and then along its side to Fossgate. Gibbons fished out the keys and, after taking down the police tape, let them in the front door.

  “My,” said Bethancourt, stepping over the threshold, “this brings back memories.”

  “Were you really here that much when you were a schoolboy?” asked Gibbons, hunting for the light switch.

  “Yes; it was an approved place to visit,” answered Bethancourt. “Not only that, but old Mr. Mittlesdon would often let us trade in old books for new ones, which saved on pocket money. Besides, I like bookshops.”

  While Bethancourt began a leisurely inspection of Mittlesdon’s current stock, Gibbons went to check the back door. When he returned, he found PC Murphy in the front room with Bethancourt.

  “Ah,” said Bethancourt, sounding relieved. “Here he is. Constable Murphy was looking for you, Sergeant.”

  Murphy looked hopefully at Gibbons. “Very good to see you, sir,” he said with a slight emphasis.